Turning lathes, particularly for wooden work pieces, have long been used for creating solid and hollowed forms, such as dowels, rungs, bowls, and vases. Generally, a wooden work piece is secured to a motorized lathe and a handheld cutting tool is used to cut away wood from outside and/or inside the work piece to form the outer and/or inner walls of the shaped form. It is common for a work piece support rest to be placed under or about the wooden work piece, where the handheld tool is advanced into the work piece to create the form.
A drawback of such work piece support rests, however, is that they are unique to a particular lathe configuration, thus requiring at least a unique mounting system for each lathe configuration, which adds complexity and cost. Such work piece support rests further often employ support structures that are fixed in place and lack flexibility. Finally, such work piece support rests are often difficult to remove when not in use, and require that the operator work around a relatively large structure that presents an obstacle in such circumstances.
Hence, a solution for improving the work piece support rest designs, while preserving their benefits, at minimal cost which overcomes these drawbacks, would be advantageous.